Sugar preserved foods made of fruits and vegetables, like pineapple, mango, angelica, etc., preserved in sucrose and dried have been existing for a long time. These sugar preserved foods are made by immersing the foods into a sucrose syrup so that the moisture thereof is desiccated by osmotic pressure of the sucrose syrup, and have been widely popular as foods with an improved storage stability.
However, these sugar preserved foods use a lot of sucrose. Recently, with the increased awareness for sugar free products, low calorie consciousness, as well as the rise in diabetes, sugar preserved foods in which a part or all of the sucrose is replaced by another sweetener have been sought after.
Past disclosed examples for such foods include a method consisting in immersing the food into melt sugar alcohol so as to dehydrate the food and obtain food which surface is covered with sugar alcohol (Japanese Patent Publication Before Examination No. S62(1987)-244), a method wherein beans for fancy beverages are immersed into a dilute saline solution before soaking the beans into a sweetener solution (Japanese Patent Publication Before Examination No. H10(1998)-33119), etc.
However, as the method of JPS62(1987)-244 A employs sugar alcohol that has been heated up to melting point, the food is dehydrated of almost all moisture, like being fried in oil and is a far cry from sucrose preserved foods.
In addition, a method for manufacturing sugar preserved foods consisting of beans for fancy beverage which are normally not meant to be eaten such as disclosed in JPH10(1998)-33119 A, could not be adopted as it is. Namely, there is no need of a manipulation for removing the bitterness of the beans for fancy beverages, and one did not obtain products of satisfactory quality with a sugar preservation process taking this example as reference, or when referring to manufacturing procedures of ordinary sugar preserved foods for manufacturing. More precisely, sugar preserved foods were manufactured by immersing the sugar preserved food raw material in a sugar alcohol syrup in which sucrose had been replaced by sugar alcohol, then dried. The finished sugar preserved foods were however sticky even after drying, and were clearly different from products manufactured using sucrose.